CHAPTER 7: THE ARIANS, 318-359


THE conversion of the Roman Emperor to Christianity in 312, an event of such proportions that the Christians themselves were staggered thereby for a generation and more, proved in the end to be as important a turning point in the history of the Church's own development as in that of her relations with the State. The century which saw, as an immediate effect of the conversion, the steady de-Paganising of the Roman power, saw also a much more violent sequel to it -- the struggle to determine the role of the Christian Emperor within the Christian Church. That the autocrat of the Roman world, master of all men's lives, and of the destinies and fortunes of every institution within the world-state, whom millions gladly worshipped as a god, and whom, by formal etiquette, all men treated as semi-divine, that this personification of human might would be, in the Church of Christ, no more than the equal of his subjects, acknowledging there an authority within his State which he did not control, was a consequence of the conversion that the emperor did not realise by any sudden intuition. Nor did the Church as a whole; and before the ecclesiastical mind [1] had come to the clarity of the formulae in which St. Ambrose fixed the matter for all time, the Church had to pass through fifty years of a fight which, more than once, seemed to threaten the death of the traditional faith. Caesar is no sooner converted than, as the protector of the things that are God's, he threatens to overshadow the hierarchy and its traditional chief. More than any bishop, more than all the bishops, more than the Bishop of Rome himself, Caesar in his role of Faith's defender will determine the course of the Faith's development. When the first Christian rulers appear, of the State in which the Church is born, the Church meets, for the first time, the problem of Caesaro-Papism that has never since ceased to vex her, of the Catholic prince who wills, in effect, to be pope; the danger that princely benevolence threatens to transform the mystical body of Christ into a department of State.

The occasion of the struggle is the renewal of a dispute about a point of doctrine. The point, once again, is fundamental; how far is the Church's founder divine, and therefore how far divine His work in the Church. The disputes spread widely; they are conducted with spirit, with energy and bitterness; and into the arena the whole social life of the time is drawn: not scholars merely and bishops, but the whole lay world, down to the charioteers and market-women. The mobs of the great cities are passionately interested, and play their violent part. The emperor intervenes. There is a council, a decision. The defeated party bides its time; then, through the avenues by which at courts these things are managed, it gradually turns the emperor round. The decision of the council is left intact, but the emperor is worked upon to act against the council’s promoters and defenders. There follows a desperate endeavour on the part of the emperor to pacify the State by forcibly imposing the heresy. In the end the heresy disappears, but not even then is the Church's view of Caesar's role wholly victorious. For if, in the East, heresy disappears, it is because an emperor succeeds who is a Catholic. There it is by now a tradition that Caesar interferes in matters of religion, and that he is a lawful court of appeal. Whence, succeeding the struggle of the Church against Caesar patronising heresy, a new struggle against the Catholic Caesar, now fettering the Church with his insistent patronage. The second struggle is not determined for centuries. It only ends with Caesar's victory and the disappearance of the Church from his State.

Arianism, as a theological doctrine, was the outcome of yet another effort of the Greek mind to reconcile rationally the truths that there is but one God, that the Logos incarnate in Jesus Christ is God, and that the Logos is yet admittedly distinct from the Father. If the Father is God, and if God is one only, and if the Logos is not the Father, how is the Logos God? The Gnostics of the second century had proposed their solution, and a succession of other theories had continued to trouble the peace of believers through all the next hundred years. All in their turn had been condemned; for, whatever the merit of these ingenious systems, none had produced a satisfactory explanation which yet preserved the traditional faith in its integrity. Praxeas, Noetus, and Sabellius ended by identifying Father and Logos. Theodotus, on the other hand, and the more famous Paul of Samosata, denied that the Logos is truly divine. Of Paul’s spectacular disgrace we already know something. With him there fell, too, his friend the priest Lucian, so notorious as heretical in this matter that he lay excommunicated through the reigns of Paul’s three successors Later, under what circumstances we do not know, Lucian made his peace and, in the persecution of Galerius, gave his life for the Faith, 312. The memory of his martyrdom was still fresh, and his tomb at Nicomedia, the eastern capital, a centre of pilgrimage when, ten years later, Constantine came to rule the East, and the new Emperor's mother, St. Helen, adopted Lucian as her patron saint. Arius was the pupil of Lucian, and Lucian the real father of Arianism. [2]

The theory of Arianism is that "God is One, Eternal, Unbegotten. All other beings are His creatures, the Logos the first of them. Like other creatures the Logos was created from nothing and not from the divine substance (ousia in the Greek). There was a time when the Logos did not exist. His creation was not necessary, but due to the will of the Father. The Logos, God's creature, is in turn the creator of all other creatures and his relationship to them is a kind of justification of his being called God. God adopted him as Son foreseeing his merits, for the Logos is free, subject to change and determined to good by his own will. From this adoptive sonship there does not result any real share in the divine nature, any true likeness to it. There cannot be anything like to God. The Holy Spirit is the first of the creatures created by the Logos. He is even less God than the Logos. The Logos became flesh in this sense that in Jesus Christ he took the place of the soul. "

Arius, at the time of Constantine's conversion, was a priest in Alexandria known for his ascetic life, with a great following, among the clergy and, especially, the consecrated virgins whom he directed in the higher way. He was also a preacher of talent, and he began a few years later to fill his church with a popular exposition of Lucian's theory (318). The novelty had all a novelty's success until it was officially brought to the notice of the Bishop of Alexandria. There followed the usual procedure of enquiry and consultation, and it was decided that Arius' explanation was not in accord with the traditional belief. Arius was called upon to abandon it. He refused, and thereupon, with his adherents, he was excommunicated. So far the dispute was on the smallest possible scale -- an obscure priest and his bishop. But the priest had travelled, had made friends, and some of these were powerful. The most powerful of them was an old classfellow of the days when, at Antioch, Arius had followed the lectures of Lucian. This was Eusebius, now a bishop -- bishop indeed of the imperial city Nicomedia, and related to the new imperial family. When, after his condemnation, Arius set himself to write "to all the bishops," in writing to Eusebius of Nicomedia he was writing to an assured ally. The Bishop of Alexandria, too, wrote to the other bishops -- more than seventy letters in all, among them one to the pope -- an official notification of the heresy and the condemnation, to ensure that Arius, who by this time had fled, should find himself condemned wherever he halted.
Arius, however, found a welcome among his friends at Nicomedia, and set himself to organise a body of supporters. Letters, pamphlets, and popular songs embodying his doctrine, poured from his pen. His bishop replied, the other bishops took sides, and soon all the East was ablaze with the controversy -- Egypt condemning Arius, the bishops of Asia, led by Eusebius, supporting him. The dispute was still unsettled when, in the September of 324, Constantine defeated the Eastern Emperor Licinius and became, at last, sole master of the Roman world. To him the disputants turned.

His first action was to send to Alexandria the bishop who most possessed his confidence, Hosius of Cordova. It was possibly from this meeting of Hosius and Alexander of Alexandria that there came the idea of submitting the matter to a council that would not be local merely, as all councils up to now had been, but would gather in all the bishops of the Church. Whatever the origin of the plan, Constantine made it his own. It was in his name that the bishops were invited; he provided the travelling facilities which alone made its meeting possible; and he chose the place where it should assemble, Nicea, a city of Bithynia, close to his capital. The council opened in the June of 325. Estimates differ as to the number of bishops present. Traditionally they were 318, but the creed bears the signatures of 220 only. They were almost all from the eastern half of the Empire, fourteen only from Europe and of these fourteen eleven were from European Greece. [3] The Bishop of Rome was absent; his age forbade his making the journey, but two of his priests represented him. Hosius presided.

To the bishops who assisted at the magnificent festivities with which the council opened, the whole affair must have seemed incredible. Most of them had suffered for the Faith, some very recently indeed, in the persecution of Licinius. They had seen their colleagues die atrociously in its defence. Many of them, blind and lamed, still bore in their bodies eloquent testimony of their own fidelity under trial. Now all was changed, and the honoured guests of the power which so recently had worked to destroy them, escorted by that soldiery the sight of whose arms must still provoke memories at which they shuddered, the Catholic bishops were come together with all possible pomp to regulate their differences before the face of the world.

The minutes of the Council of Nicea have long since disappeared. Apparently the procedure followed by the Roman Senate, and already traditional in councils, was adopted. Each bishop who wished to speak stated his opinion, and then followed the general discussion. The parties soon showed themselves. For Arius there was a tiny fighting band of seventeen, led by Eusebius. Of the rest, one large party was against any innovation in the traditional Faith or in the manner of its exposition, opposed indeed to the idea that any investigation was necessary. Others were for examining every detail of the tradition before reaffirming it.

Arius was given his chance. He stated his doctrine in all its bald simplicity. The bishops agreed to condemn it. It was a more difficult matter to agree on the form the condemnation should take. A test-formula was needed which would express the traditional Faith precisely as it differed from the heresy, and thus bar out the new doctrine's adherents. Eusebius of Nicomedia had one ready. It was rejected, because it was so ambiguous that Arians could sign it as easily as Catholics. His namesake, Eusebius of Cesarea, -- " the Father of Church History," one chief source for many earlier matters, down to 324, and who, also, from a Lucianist education, favoured Arius -- proposed a better. It was however, even so, too ambiguous to suit the Council. Something more precise, a phrase which could not possibly be interpreted in an Arian sense was needed; and finally, to express the fullness of the Son's divinity in relation to that of the Father, the term homoousion (i.e. consubstantial, of the same substance) was proposed. It met the case admirably, and it was accepted. But not without much discussion, hesitation and, even in the end, reluctance. Quite apart from the Arianisers, whom such a close definition would force into the open as innovators and drive out of the Church, there were Catholics also who disliked this fashion of defining faith in new terms not to be found in the Scriptures. Again this particular term had, for Easterns, unhappy heretical associations. Paul of Samosata, it was remembered, had used it fifty years earlier, not it is true to express the idea that Father and Son are of the same nature, but with the meaning that they are identical in person. Sabellius, too, had used it to convey a like notion. Paul’s theory had been condemned and with it the term he used, as he used it. On the other hand, with the meaning now given it, the term had long been in use in the West. It was Tertullian's consubstantialis translated, and Rome had given this use an orthodox consecration in the settlement of the disputes about Denis of Alexandria's orthodoxy now nearly seventy years ago. In favour of the term homoousion, then, there was the great advantage that it exactly met the need of the moment as did no other term; and there was good warrant for its being so used. In this acceptance by Easterns of a term they disliked but which had Roman use to support its orthodoxy, we can perhaps discern a trace of Roman influence at the Council; the test clause of the formulary it adopted was Roman. That formulary is the famous Creed of Nicea. It deserves to be cited as the council proclaimed it.

"We believe in one only God, the Father, Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one only Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the sole-begotten of the Father, that is to say of the Father's substance, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father (homoousion to Patri), by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down, became incarnate, became man, suffered, was raised again on the third day, ascended back to heaven and will come again to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit. As for those who say 'There was a time when He did not exist; before He was begotten He did not exist; He was made from nothing or from another substance or essence; the Son of God is a created being, changeable, capable of alteration,' to such as these the Catholic Church says Anathema."

With two exceptions all the bishops signed, whatever their real beliefs, whatever their doubts as to the prudence of the defining word. Eusebius of Nicomedia at the solicitation of his patron Constantia, Constantine's sister, the widow of Licinius, signed with the rest. The two recalcitrants were promptly exiled, and the Emperor's orders were sent to Alexandria to secure the acceptance of the council’s decision and the removal of dissidents.

Here the history of Arianism should have ended. But now, for the first time in the history of the Church, a heresy was, after its condemnation, not only to survive, but to survive within the Church, to be protected there and maintained, and to be a cause of disorders whose bitter fruits are with us still; and all this was because now, for the first time, there remained to the condemned heretics the resource of appealing against the condemnation to that new element in the Church, the Christian Emperor. A new untraditional procedure is to begin to function; the new circumstance of Caesar's being a Christian is to be made to tell. It is the condemned who will attempt it, and their success will not only create a precedent for future condemned heretics, but initiate Caesar into the exercise of new unlawful power, create in him a taste for it, and habituate him to its exercise.

The first attempt to reopen the question ended badly for those who organised it. Some of the dispossessed Arians from Alexandria came to court to plead their case. Eusebius and a neighbouring bishop -- Theognis of Nicea -- supported them, but too enthusiastically. The appellants were dismissed and the two bishops exiled. In exile they remained for three years.

It is with the return of Eusebius in 330 that the next chapter in the story begins. Eusebius was no mere theorist concerned only to expound his unorthodox views, but a cool and capable leader who must, in order to retain his influence and position, either capitulate to the forces which had defeated him in 325 and exiled him in 327, or now, in his turn, drive them out. He realised that a frontal attack on the Council of Nicea would fail. Constantine was too attached to the council and to its definition as his own achievement to tolerate, where these were concerned, any other attitude than obedient submission. It was, however, another matter to attack the men responsible for the definition. To force these into exile, and then, with a new personnel in the highest ranks of the hierarchy substitute an Arian interpretation of Nicea might be possible. Eusebius could count on sympathy within the imperial family; he could use against those who stood by the letter of the homoousion the numerous bishops who, though they believed what it expressed, disliked the term and suspected those who imposed it. The council had long ago dispersed: Eusebius remained, Bishop of the Capital, the emperor's natural adviser in religious matters, ready and able at every opportunity astutely to suggest what he was now too wise to propose, and at every turn able to show himself as the emperor's obedient servant.

Slowly, gradually, after the return of the exiles, the controversy re-opened, its central point shifted now to the expediency of using the critical " homoousion ". Was the term really orthodox? Was it not as heretical as Arius himself? Not of course Arian, but, perhaps, Sabellian? In the meshes of this subtle dispute Eusebius caught his first victim the bishop of the second chief city of the East, Eustathius of Antioch. Eustathius accused the Bishop of Nicomedia of betraying the faith of Nicea. Eusebius replied that the Bishop of Antioch was a Sabellian. At Antioch, the city where Lucian had taught, where Arius and Eusebius had learnt their heresy, there was a strong pro-Arian faction. Eustathius had done his best to drive them out. Here was their opportunity. A council was summoned, at which Eusebius played his part, and Eustathius was deposed, 331. There were riots and, lest Eustathius should become a perpetual provocation by his presence, Constantine followed up the council’s sentence by a second sentence of exile. This henceforth is to be the normal procedure with deposed bishops.

In place of the deposed Eustathius there was elected one of the few bishops who, at Nicea, had gone so far as expressly to defend Arius -- Paulinus of Tyre. He died, however, in a matter of months, and in the election of his successor the emperor took a hand. He congratulated the Antiocheans on their expulsion of Eustathius -- "they had cleared the ship of its bilge" -- and he recommended as their new bishop either of two candidates for the orthodoxy of whose faith he pledged his word. Inevitably one of the imperially nominated was chosen, Euphronios. For the first time in history the civil power has interfered in the election of a bishop; the novelty is the work of a faction; they will make over to the civil power one prerogative after another, if only they can thereby destroy that orthodoxy by whose existence they stand condemned.

The events at Antioch were a pattern for subsequent Eusebian procedure. One city after another saw them repeated, and bishop after bishop who had fought Eusebius was deposed, exiled, and provided with a Eusebian successor. The machinery of this ecclesiastical revolution was consistently the same -- orders and directions from the emperor himself.

The next stage was to install a Eusebian in the greatest of all the Eastern sees, Alexandria. The bishop who, years ago now, had condemned Arius and assisted at Nicea's ratification of that condemnation, was dead. In his place there had been elected one of his principal advisers, his companion at Nicea, the deacon Athanasius. With him there enters into the story its greatest figure. He was able, he was learned, he was orthodox. His life was irreproachable. He was to his people a model bishop, and for tenacity of purpose, the inflexibility bred of a clear grasp of principle, no hero of Church History has ever surpassed him. Eusebius attacked, in a letter inviting Athanasius to open his church to the friends of Arius. The Bishop of Alexandria explained that since they all lay under the anathema of Nicea the thing was impossible. Whereupon there came to him a further letter, this time from the emperor, "You know my will. Whosoever wishes to re-enter the Church is to be given all facilities. If I hear that you have forbidden to enter anyone who wishes to return, I shall speedily send someone with power to depose you by my order." Athanasius, undismayed, protested ever more clearly that "there can be no communion between the Catholic Church and a heresy which fights against Christ."

Athanasius had on his hands, at this time, a more domestic anxiety -- the Meletian schism. Three of the schismatics went to the capital to lay complaints of a civil nature against him. Eusebius welcomed them, advised them, and Constantine, though he was not sufficiently convinced to have the affair formally dealt with, summoned Athanasius to reply in person. He cleared himself without difficulty and, apparently, quite won over the emperor. But, twelve months later (334), the trouble began again. New accusations of the same nature, with this in addition that he had murdered a bishop, were made and this time it was before the emperor's brother, residing at Antioch, that Athanasius had to clear himself. Again, without difficulty, he was successful, producing the supposedly dead bishop as convincing answer to the charge ! But this time Eusebius had been certain that his opponent was finished. So certain indeed that with other bishops of his party he was already en route for the East, to a council to be held at Cesarea, which would make an end of Athanasius, when the emperor ordered him home. To Athanasius Constantine wrote once more, expressing his confidence in him.

Constantine had twice turned from Eusebius to his calumniated opponent. But when Eusebius, a third time regained it, his hold on the imperial mind was to be permanent. The council forbidden at Cesarea in 334, was allowed to meet in 335. The place chosen was Tyre. With Athanasius came forty-nine bishops from Egypt. They were refused admission. The jury was already carefully packed, Arians to a man, Eusebius at their head; and behind this Eusebian conspiracy lay the prestige and power of the Court. An imperial official was the Council’s president. "How can anyone dare to give the name of synod to this assembly over which a count presided? It was the count who spoke, the members of the synod were silent, or rather they took the count's orders. He gave his orders and the soldiery put us out. In reality it was Eusebius and his friends who gave the orders. The count was there to carry them out. What kind of a synod was it, which, if such were the prince's good pleasure, might end with a sentence of exile or death?" So the Egyptian bishops protested in later days. It was indeed a new kind of council, the first of its kind, but destined to be the pattern of imperially organised councils under the Casaro-papist emperors. The old accusations once more made their appearance, and along with them new ones of the same type. Athanasius, yet again, cleared himself of the first, and as to the newer charges the council named a carefully chosen deputation to investigate them on the spot. That they made the investigation so carefully as never to examine the principal witnesses, and with such discretion that they never officially knew even of their existence, surprised no one. Not truth was their aim but a report which would help on the work of the council. Athanasius understood -- none better -- and he left the council to lay his case in person before the emperor.

In his absence the Eusebians carried out the appointed programme only the more easily. They condemned him, deposed him, forbade him to return to his episcopal city. They had not yet separated when from Constantinople came letters from the emperor. Athanasius and his sovereign had met -- casually, in a street of the capital, as the court returned from its hunting. Constantine would have ignored him but the bishop held firm, coldly stating his one simple desire -- to meet his enemies face to face in the emperor's presence. Constantine agreed and the bishops, fresh from sentencing Athanasius, were ordered to the capital to justify their proceedings. The heretics had called in Caesar to redress the balance of the orthodoxy so heavily weighed against them. Now Athanasius had made a like appeal -- none too wisely. It was his first -- and last -- reliance on the princes of this world. The provincial council was arranged. It was very brief, for Eusebius had found a new charge, that the Bishop of Alexandria had schemed to hold up the capital’s corn supply. The mere accusation drove Constantine into one of those fits of fury to which he was liable. Without further ado Athanasius was exiled, banished to the very end of the world, to Treves and the distant Moselle (335).

Eusebius might rest content. The last out-and-out leader of the homoousion party, the most uncompromising of the survivors of Nicea, was driven out at last. The victor returned t o the East to Jerusalem, whither the bishops from Tyre had gone to celebrate the consecration of the new basilica built by the magnificent imperial generosity over the site of Our Lord's tomb. Thence, in a synodal letter, he proclaimed his victory to the Christian world. Arius and his associates have now given pledges of their orthodoxy to the emperor. He exhorts us peaceably to receive them back into the Church whence unseemly envy has lately expelled them. He stands guarantee for their good faith. The formula the Arians were to sign as the condition of their restoration, and which Eusebius and his bishops at Jerusalem accepted as proof of their orthodoxy, follows the imperial letter as an appendix. It is the creed of Nicea with the critical phrases carefully omitted. The term homoousion does not appear at all, and instead of the affirmation that Jesus is the Son "begotten of the Father," it is merely stated that as God the Logos He existed from all time. The Nicean definition is not explicitly repudiated, it is simply ignored. In its place is an equivocal compromise, which Arians can subscribe as well as Catholics, and which Arian ingenuity has devised to obscure the distinction between Nicea and the theories there condemned. In ten years, Arius, thanks to the astute pertinacity of his "fellow-Lucianist" Eusebius, and despite Nicea, is back in the Church. The bishops at Jerusalem have sanctioned the new practice of finding substitutes for definitions of faith in order to rally dissidents. This, too, is a precedent that henceforward every condemned heretic will most carefully strive to follow.

To complete the triumph, it only remained for Arius to be received back into the Church with all the apparatus of public ceremonial. But Alexandria would have none of him. Its bishop might be in exile, but the people stood loyally by him. The riots were so violent, so continuous, that the scheme was abandoned, and Arius was summoned to Constantinople, charged with the responsibility of the disorder. There, too, his arrival divided the city into] hostile factions. The bishop, no Arian but perplexed, hesitated. The prelates of the Council of Jerusalem were by this time, most of them, in the capital, enthusiastic to see their decisions imposed as law. Constantine lent his aid. The Catholics of the city stormed heaven with supplications that the catastrophe might be averted. In vain, apparently, for the day was fixed and the church chosen. But on the very eve Arius himself suddenly died (336). A few months later Constantine, too, was dead (May 22, 337). The Eusebians had lost, in the very moment when their triumph seemed complete.

The figure of the historical Constantine later ages overlaid with legend. Under this softening influence he becomes the model of Catholic princes, a first pattern St. Louis for all succeeding ages. The truth is very different [4] In his manners he remained, to the end, very much the Pagan of his early life. His furious tempers, the cruelty which, once aroused, spared not the lives even of his wife and son, are not only disproof of the legend but an unpleasing witness to the imperfection of his conversion. That conversion was indeed sincere. The emperor certainly I believed that Christ Our Lord had appeared to him, had promised him victory. Victory had in fact followed and thenceforward Constantine's faith had been proof against all doubt. He gave himself to Christ, and broke from the official polytheism incompatible with his new allegiance. But there he halted. He was not received into the Church, even as a catechumen, until the very end. Nor, possibly, did his knowledge of his new religion ever advance beyond this simple belief that Christ is the One and Only God. Uninstructed, a politician concerned to safeguard at the same time the welfare of the Church of Christ and the public order, expediency inevitably determined his decisions; and in the oligarchy of court prelates such as Eusebius of Nicomedia this disposition found every encouragement. Constantine was the greatest military leader the Empire had known for nearly a century, and as an administrative reformer he was only surpassed by Diocletian. That such a man should be indifferent to the internal life of the Church, to its controversies and the intense movement born of them would have been impossible. His intervention was inevitable, and it had its limits. It was, in his own conception, as the servant of Christ's religion that he intervened, to protect the faith defined -- but never himself to define it. It was his misfortune, rather than his fault, that Christ's religion was to him the religion of Eusebius and his associates. To their influence was due the most serious flaw in all his ecclesiastical policy -- his practical neglect of the Roman primacy, which he treated as non-existent. Later legend told how the Emperor, struck with leprosy, visited the pope, and how, St. Sylvester baptizing him in the Lateran, the leprosy was healed as the baptismal water cleansed his soul. The truth is far other. "The Roman Church -- Constantine's generous presents apart, and the presence of two of its priests at Nicea -- has no history between the council of 313 under Pope Miltiades and that of 340 under Julius I. The Papacy, one may say, seems with Sylvester to pass through a quarter of a century's retirement." In place of the traditional court of last appeal, Constantine was guided by the oligarchy whose head was the bishop of his capital city. This novelty was to show all its mischievous consequences in the reign of his son Constantius II (337-361). Not only would the emperor then "protect the faith, but he would himself decide what faith merited his protection. And if, with all his advantages, the son did not succeed, his failure would be owing very largely to the fact that the Bishop of Rome, carefully excluded from effective power in the East, continued in his traditional authority in the West, and binding the West in a firm resistance, rallied what remained of orthodox Catholicism even in the carefully disciplined eastern hierarchy.

These things, in 337, no man could foresee, neither the aggression of Constantius II nor the amazing sudden re-appearance of the Papacy, fully armed, with St. Julius I (338-352). The great emperor was dead, and he had died as a Christian should, sorrowing for his sins and begging God's mercy, pledging himself most solemnly as he received the white robe of the newly-baptized to live what rest of life God granted him in more seemly accord with the Faith he professed. It was, however, no Catholic who thus initiated him with the sacraments but an Arian, no less an Arian in fact than Eusebius himself.

Constantine did not lack for relatives to inherit his Empire. He had three surviving sons, he had brothers, he had nephews. His death was the signal for a family massacre in which, to the profit of his sons, his brothers and some of the nephews perished. There were left as almost the only survivors of the descendants of Constantius Chlorus, the three sons of Constantine, Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans. The vast heritage was once more divided. To Constantine II went the dioceses of Spain, Gaul and Britain; to Constantius II those of Thrace, Asia, Pontus, Egypt and the East; to Constans Africa, Italy, Rome, Dacia and Macedonia. Three years later, in a civil war with Constans, Constantine II met his death and, his heritage passing to the victor, of the two surviving brothers Constans was master easily of the greater part of the Roman world, and the predominant partner. The fact played an important part in ecclesiastical affairs, for, while Constantius II in the East was a decided Eusebian, though not even a catechumen, Constans was a Catholic, and was even baptized. His health unfortunately was poor, and with this continual debility went a disinclination for action. Nevertheless, he was strong enough, so long as he lived -- he died in 350 -- to make any Arian aggression in the West impossible, and to exercise some restraint upon anti-Catholic violence in the East.

Two events marked the beginning of the new regime after the death of Constantine the Great (337). St. Athanasius was allowed to return to Alexandria, and Eusebius succeeded, in defiance of Church law, in capturing for himself the see of Constantinople. A renewal of the conflict in the East was already in sight.

It began with an attempt to install at Alexandria an Arian rival to Athanasius. The Eusebians revived the memory of the sentence passed on him long since at Tyre (335) but never confirmed. Each of the three emperors was approached, and an embassy sent with a like mission to Rome. The Western Emperors dismissed the envoys; Constantius II welcomed them, and promised support. Rome acted with the traditional formality, observance of the canons which governed appeals. The pope -- Julius I -- knew the men with whom he was dealing. They had already planned to trap him into an implicit disavowal of Nicea when they sought confirmation for the Arian competitor of St. Athanasius, suppressing the fact that, excommunicated himself, he was ordained by an excommunicated bishop. Now, presented with the minutes of the Council of Tyre, the Pope wrote to St. Athanasius, enclosing the accusing documents, bidding him summon a synod before which he should clear himself and to report its decision. The synod was held. The Bishop of Alexandria, once more going through all the ancient charges once more cleared himself, and the council sent its decision to Rome.

Meanwhile, the Eusebians had written again to Rome. This time they asked the pope to judge between them and St. Athanasius. The emperors held aloof. After all these years of imperial protection the normal procedure was once more to have its chance-the Bishop of Rome deciding an appeal of one bishop against another. But before the appeal was heard, the situation at Alexandria suddenly changed. Constantius sent orders that St. Athanasius was to be expelled, and in his place another enthroned as bishop -- Gregory of Cappadocia, a notorious Arian, a lieutenant admittedly of Eusebius. This was indeed imperial confirmation of the sentence manufactured at Tyre. It revealed Constantius as an Arian, and that Eusebius was able to play in the new reign the part he had played in the old.

St. Athanasius, expelled but not a whit thereby dismayed, blazed out in an encyclical of protest, to which the pope replied by summoning him to the council shortly to be held at Rome, the council for which the Eusebians had asked, where all should be reviewed. To this council there came in, from all parts of the East, bishops who had been the victims of the Eusebian treachery, expelled by his manoeuvres, hailing the unhoped for boon of an ecclesiastical council free from imperial influence. But the Eusebians now would have no share in it. To the pope's notification -- since they had chosen him as judge, he now informed them when the council would meet and that should they not appear they would be judged accordingly -- they replied in a manifesto full of threats and sarcasms, refusing to accept his jurisdiction in the matter. Unless the pope will recognise the sentences of Tyre and the other depositions they have decreed, they will not, for the future, hold communion with him. The manifesto was the product of a council held at Antioch, and it bears the signatures of a variety of bishops. It strikes a new note in the history of the relation between Rome and the other sees. It is the first open denial of her primacy, the first occasion when the Bishop of Rome has been threatened with rebellion to coerce his jurisdiction (341).

For the moment the pope ignored the letter. The council held its sessions. The deposed and exiled bishops stated their cases. The case of the Bishop of Alexandria was given especial consideration. The council thereupon decided that all had been unjustly condemned, and the pope summed up the decision in a letter to the Easterns. As one reads this letter one understands the reluctance of the Eusebians to appeal to Rome, the long years during which they kept Rome out of the quarrel, and the instinct which prompted them to refuse her jurisdiction once they realised it had begun to operate. It is not merely that the letter has all the easy Roman serenity, that the charity which inspires it is itself such a condemnation of their own misdeeds. But there is present, throughout, that Roman consciousness of universal authority, which, informing the precedents that St. Julius quotes against the incipient schismatics, makes the letter the most notable of papal contributions to the century's long debate. The pope is astonished that his own charitable letter has provoked such a bitter and scornful reply. He would have preferred not to publish it, had in fact held it back until the last, hoping against hope that the arrival of the Easterns, returned to a better frame of mind, would cancel what they had written. "That he whom you chose to write it thought it an occasion to make a show of eloquence moves us not at all, for in ecclesiastical matters the important thing is not to parade one's eloquence but to observe the apostolic canons, and carefully to avoid whatever may give scandal." The Easterns now deny that the decision of a council (i.e. Tyre in 335) can be revised by a second council. They are reminded that they themselves petitioned for the second council, and " even had your envoys not themselves demanded that council, had it been myself who sought it as a means whereby the appeal of those complaining of injustice might be heard, my intervention would have been just and praiseworthy because in accord with ecclesiastical practice and agreeable to God." Nicea itself had passed judgment in matters where previous councils had already judged, and in so doing Nicea itself had merely followed ancient precedent. "Your claim is then unjustifiable, for a custom once established in the Church, and confirmed by councils, is not to be abolished by a chance group of individuals." As for the intruded Gregory of Cappadocia, whom this faction asserts to be the lawful Bishop of Alexandria, " what ecclesiastical canon, what apostolic tradition empowered them, at a time when there was peace in the Church and when Athanasius was so generally recognised, to send this Gregory, ordained by them at Antioch and escorted thence to Alexandria, not by priests and deacons of his church, but by soldiery?" The church of Alexandria and the bishops of the province alone had the right to decide the matter. Supposing there had been some real ground of complaint against all these bishops -- Athanasius, Marcellus of Ancyra and the many others who had come to Rome to make appeal-the ecclesiastical rule should have been observed. "Your duty was to write to all of us so that in rendering justice we might all of us have shared. For it was a question of bishops and churches more than usually important since they had, in times past, had the Apostles themselves for rulers. Are you ignorant that the usual thing is to write first to us, and that thus justice may be rendered from here? Those then who, far from this, have acted without reference to us, in this arbitrary fashion, would then like us now to signify approval in a case where we have no knowledge? This is not according as Paul commanded, nor as the tradition of the Fathers. This is a procedure wholly foreign and new. I beseech you, allow me to say it thus. I write what I write in the common interest, and what I write to you is what we have received from the blessed apostle Peter."

The protest fell on deaf ears. The emperor who mattered-the emperor of the East, Constantius II -- ignored it, and St. Athanasius with the rest could only resign himself to the exile. Constantius was one with the arianising Easterns, and the bishops of the court faction, later that same year (341), assembled at Antioch with others to the number of a hundred for the dedication of the basilica, picked up the challenge of the letter of Pope Julius and replied with an implicit denial of his claims. They confirmed Gregory of Cappadocia as bishop of St. Athanasius' see; they denied that they were Arians although they acknowledged that they had received Arius once more into the Church. As an exposition of Catholic teaching in the matter of the divinity of the Logos they preferred to the Nicean creed a creed attributed to Lucian; it expressed the same truth but, they explained, in more suitable language. More truly the new creed sacrificed that truth because it sacrificed the one term which unmistakably expressed the precise deviation of the heresy Nicea had condemned. The new equivocal phraseology was a deliberate confusing of issues clarified these fifteen years, and the new confusion was introduced in the interests of the heresy. This council, In Encaeniis, of 341 inaugurates the new strategy of finding synonyms for the technical terms used in conciliar definitions, synonyms designed to betray the truth already decreed and to ensure the condemned heretics their place within the Church. The precedent now set will be followed faithfully in every crisis of heresy for the next two hundred years. It will, almost always, gain the emperor -- for it is the high water mark of ecclesiastical expediency in matters doctrinal. It will often rally to a lowering of the standards of orthodoxy that orthodoxy's recent defenders, for it promises to gain the heretic while maintaining truth. It will always find in the last resource a resolute opponent in the Bishop of Rome, if nowhere else. His opposition will reject such compromise, at the cost of no matter what measure of peace, ecclesiastical or civil.

It was in the emperor's presence that this council met, Eastern bishops, heretics all, banded with their emperor against Rome. So will it be, again and yet again, until with their emperor they work themselves free of the Bishop of Rome and the Church of Christ.

The council of 341 has another interest, for it marks a change of tactics on the part of the bishops who led the movement. They are anxious to dissociate themselves from Arius, dead now this five years, and from his radically exposed ideas which only a few extremists defend. To be a self-acknowledged Arian was no recommendation anywhere outside that narrow circle. Hence, with a last salute to the memory of the dead heresiarch, they put out a series of formulae of calculated vagueness to indicate the difference between their own orthodoxy and the universally reprobated heresy. It was not Arius, nor was it Nicea: it was Lucian. Its present defenders claimed it as the traditional Catholic faith; the Catholics signed it because there were defenders of the homoousion who were Sabellian; and the Council went on to condemn, yet once again, the heretics who failed to make the proper distinction between the Father and the Son: Sabellius, that is to say, Paul of Samosata, and Marcellus of Ancyra. The first two were dead long since. The third, however, was not only alive but, driven from his see like Athanasius for opposition to the Eusebians, at this very moment in Rome. More, the famous letter of St. Julius had expressly mentioned his case, had publicly proclaimed him as a protege of the Roman See so that, as has been said, that letter marks an alliance between Julius, Athanasius, and Marcellus of Ancyra. Now, unhappily, Marcellus was looked upon with suspicion throughout the East. He was a true opponent of Arianism, and perhaps his intentions were orthodox. But his language was certainly tricky, and there was only too much justification, in the terms he used, for the charge of Sabellianism made against him. When the council of 341 made the charge, and condemned him, it promised to do more harm to the Romanled defence of Nicea than any frontal attack could have done, for it not only condemned this apparent heretic, but also "all those in communion with him." The council proclaimed the chief defenders of Nicea as themselves suspect of heresy in the eyes of the Catholics in the East who still held out against Eusebius.

Eusebius himself died this same year, 341, the fruitful result of his sixteen years of episcopacy a divided Church, East and West drawn up the one against the other. It was a lamentable state of things indeed, and before it should harden into permanency the pope turned to a last effort of reconciliation. Through his own emperor, the Catholic Constans, he approached the sovereign of the East. After one or two failures the negotiations succeeded thus far that the two emperors agreed to call a council of bishops of the two empires. It was to meet at Sardica, the modem Sofia, a city of the Western Empire but close to the frontier of the East.

At Sardica then the council met in the autumn of 342 or 343 (authorities dispute the date). There were, in all, a hundred and seventy bishops, seventy-six of them from the States of Constantius II. Hosius of Cordova once more presided and the pope was represented by two priests of the Roman Church. The Easterns arrived with their minds made up. The council’s task would be the simple one of registering what they had already decided. Before they would consent to take their places in the council, the council must ratify the condemnation of St. Athanasius and Marcellus -- accept, that is, without discussion, the Eastern view on two of the points to discuss which the council had been called. Hosius, of course, rejected their ultimatum, and the Easterns thereupon, that same night, left Sardica, leaving behind a lengthy protestation. In this they renewed their condemnation of St. Athanasius and Marcellus, denied the right of the West to revise the decision of an Eastern council, and, laying upon the West the blame for this new breakdown, they excommunicated Hosius and the pope with him. They ended with a statement of belief characteristically ambiguous. Meanwhile at Sardica, the council proceeded with its work -- the stale re-examination of the ancient often-exploded charges against St. Athanasius and those against Marcellus too. St. Athanasius once more they cleared. As to Marcellus he, too, was cleared, the council accepting an explanation that what had provoked criticism in his exposition of faith had been, in his intention, theory merely and hypothesis. The bishops unlawfully intruded by the emperor into the different sees of the East were excommunicated and, with them, the leaders of the recent schism from the council. It was suggested, too, that the council might issue a new statement of belief, but, thanks to St. Athanasius, the wiser course was followed of reissuing the adequate, unmistakable creed of Nicea.

The Council of Sardica, failing to unite the divided episcopate, served only to stabilise the division. But although it failed completely in the purpose for which it had been summoned, it left behind it a memorable series of disciplinary canons in which, seeing how the root of the trouble lay in the civil power's usurpation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, it proposed, by strengthening previous legislation regarding the relative rights of bishops, to set a barrier against the new aggression. These canons recall and re-enact the old law that a bishop consecrated for one see is not, on any pretext, to pass therefrom to any other see. Bishops are not to receive clergy excommunicated by their own bishop, nor are they to invade the sees of a neighbouring (civil) province unless duly invited. Bishops whom a necessity of private affairs calls outside their sees are reminded of the rule that no bishop is to be absent from his see for more than three Sundays, and that outside their own sees they are to respect the rights and liturgical prerogatives of the bishop in whose see they find themselves. Useful legislation, this, to check the episcopal vagabondage which had so assisted the Eusebian faction's growth. The clergy's right of appeal from their own bishop to the bishops of the province is recognised, and where the bishop himself is accused, the old law is still maintained that he is not to be judged by his own subjects. Such cases the council of the bishop's province must decide. From the provincial council such a bishop, should he be condemned, can appeal and the appeal is to the Bishop of Rome. The Bishop of Rome may himself decide the case or order a new trial, and at this the judges are to be the bishops of a neighbouring province. The Eusebian Council of Antioch (In Encaeniis) of 341 had decided that sentences passed on a bishop by the unanimity of a provincial council were irrevocable; and that where the provincial council was divided, the metropolitan should associate with his own bishops those of a neighbouring province and, whatever the new decision, it should be final. This attempted destruction of a bishop's right of appeal to Rome had been the Eusebian reply to Pope Julius I's council in Rome and its rehabilitation of St. Athanasius. The canons of Sardica were a riposte to the Eusebian innovations. They re-affirm and implement what St. Julius had affirmed in his letter to the Easterns, namely that a case could be rejudged, and that the usage is that Rome is consulted first so that "judgment may be done from here." But Sardica did more than merely re-affirm existing rights. In its turn it innovated, when it prescribed the course of action which the Bishop of Rome judging an appeal should follow. This innovation the papacy ignored. The appeal-procedure does not appear ever to have functioned in the detail prescribed by Sardica, nor does Rome's over-riding of the council in this respect appear to have provoked any protest.

Finally the council reported to the pope in a formal synodal letter "since it seems right and truly most suitable that in what concerns each and everyone of the Lord's provinces bishops should act with reference to the head, that is to the see of Peter the Apostle."

Constantius II's reply to the letter of the Council of Sardica was of the practical order. He forbade the bishops it had rehabilitated, under pain of death, to return to their sees, and the two bishops of his Empire who had gone with the Council were sent into exile. None the less, new efforts were again made to heal the breach, and as a result delegates met at Milan in 345. But since the Catholics continued to demand a repudiation of Arius and his teaching, while the Arians refused to accept the definition of Nicea, the negotiations were without result. The Arians clung, also, to their demand that Marcellus should be condemned, and although the Catholics were willing to condemn the undeniably heretical opinions of his disciple Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium, they still refused to accept the Arian view of Marcellus. St. Athanasius, however, increasingly suspicious of Marcellus the better he came to know him, now definitely broke with him. Also, in 346, thanks to a sudden change in court favour, St. Athanasius was allowed to return to Alexandria. His second exile had lasted seven years.

So, in a kind of deadlock, the next few years went by; St. Athanasius at Alexandria but isolated from the Easterns (Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor and Thrace); the Easterns cut off from Rome and the West; while Photinus, whom all condemned, still reigned at Sirmium since no emperor had concerned himself to execute the sentence passed upon him. The assassination of Constans on January 18, 350 brought the deadlock to an end, for his heir was his one surviving brother, Constantius II, who now became sole emperor of the whole Roman world. His Arian sympathies no one could doubt, nor his willingness to act on them, and though the circumstances of his brother's death involved him in three years of civil war, the heirs of Eusebius immediately began their preparations for another attempt to capture Alexandria for Arianism by driving out St. Athanasius, and, also, to end the scandal of Photinus' hold on Sirmium.

For the moment they were powerless against St. Athanasius, for Constantius held firmly to his promises of protection. But the next year, 351, found Constantius in residence at Sirmium and at a council called there by him, and held in his palace, Photinus was deposed. This council followed a curiously novel procedure which made very evident the extent to which the new emperor was prepared to stretch his assumed ecclesiastical prerogative. By his orders a theological debate was arranged in which Photinus was allowed to expose and defend his theories. As opponent there was assigned to him the successor of his old master Marcellus, the new Bishop of Ancyra, Basil. The debate was conducted in approved scholastic fashion, official stenographers took notes for the emperor's benefit, and as judges Constantius nominated eight high officials of the Court. To complete its work the assembly at Sirmium added yet another to the series of indeterminate creeds which, by suggestion, repudiated Nicea, while Photinus -- condemned as Sabellian -- was given a successor of proved Arian orthodoxy.

The civil war came to a close with the victory of Constantius, on August 10, 353, over the usurper who had murdered his brother. Its vicissitudes had suggested to the Arians a new pretext by which to revive in Constantius his old opinions of St. Athanasius. The Bishop of Alexandria, they urged, had had his share in the attempt of the Western usurper on the peace of the empire. Day by day more bishops were rallying to him. He considered the Arians heretics, enemies to be rid of as soon as possible. Could he be really loyal to the emperor who was their patron? Moreover, there was a new pope. Julius I had died in the previous April (352). He had been the staunch champion of Athanasius. With his successor, Liberius, Arian intrigue might be more successful.

The new pope suggested to Constantius the convocation of yet another council, at Aquileia, to take up the work unfinished at Sardica ten years before. Constantius was at the moment at Arles. Instead of the council asked for, he summoned one to Arles, to which the bishops of Gaul were convoked. Assembled (353) they first of all desired to express their belief in the definition of Nicea. But the emperor would not allow this, nor indeed any discussion on the faith. Instead, he presented the assembly with an edict condemning to exile whoever would not condemn Athanasius. It was the West's first experience of the policy which had made the Eastern Church Caesar's, and it succumbed. Paulinus of Treves stood firm and was exiled. The rest, to a man, signed -- and with them the legates of Liberius.

The effect upon the pope of this betrayal by his legates should be carefully noted, for of all the popes Liberius is the one in whose case contemporary calumny has had most lasting effect. Discouraged truly, but by no means despairing, Liberius replied to this new tactic of breaking St. Athanasius by isolating him from the West as well as from the East, with a new request for a council. Constantius, whose violent language in his regard had certainly reached Liberius, made a show of entering into the plan. The pope chose new legates and in 355 the suggested council met, this time at Milan. At Arles, the bishops, incredibly ignorant of the history of the previous twenty years in the East -- it was the first time some of them had even heard of Nicea [5] -- had acted in fitting deference to requests from "the most Christian emperor." Their acquiescence had been a victory for the emperor's prestige as the son of the great Constantine. At Milan there was, from the beginning, no attempt to cloak the violence under such formalities. Arian bishops dragged the pen from the hand of the Bishop of Milan as he prepared to sign the creed of Nicea in token of orthodoxy. The council became a riot. The mob invaded the church to defend its bishop, and the council’s next meeting took place in the palace. In this more favourable locale the imperial will had its way more easily. Once more, as at Arles, the bishops signed -- all save a handful among whom, alas, were not the papal legates. The little band who resisted, Paulinus of Treves, Lucifer of Cagliari, Eusebius of Vercelli and Denis of Milan, were summoned to a special audience. " The emperor, " it is St. Athanasius who describes the scene, "having summoned the bishops, ordered them to sign the condemnation of Athanasius and to receive the heretics into communion. They protested against this innovation in Church discipline, crying out that such is not the ecclesiastical rule. Whereupon the emperor broke in 'My will is canon law ! Bishops in Syria make no such objections when I address them. Obey me or. . . exile.' The bishops, astounded at such language, lifting their hands to heaven, with great boldness opposed to the emperor that his kingly power was not his own, that it was in fact God's gift to him, and that he should fear God Who could, and suddenly, strip him of it. They reminded him of the last day and its judgment. They advised him not to throw church affairs into utter confusion, not to confuse the civil power with the Church's constitution and not to open the Church of God to the Arian heresy." Constantius, undersized and bandy in the legs, a poseur who flattered himself that his very gaze struck terror where it fell, who cultivated a deep voice and an oracular manner, listened patiently enough. Then, brandishing his sword, he ordered the bishops to instant execution, only to countermand his sentence immediately and substitute one of exile.

There were, of course, many bishops in the West who had been unable to make the journey to Milan. To reach these absentees, couriers were now sent to one town after another, and by the means used at Milan yet more signatures were obtained to the condemnation of Athanasius. Once again Liberius had been duped. This time something more was required of him. He too must sign. One of the emperor's confidential eunuchs was despatched to ask his assent. He made show of the valuable presents Constantius sent. Liberius replied fittingly. The eunuch next deposited them at the shrine of the Apostle. Liberius, learning of it, had them thrown into the street. "If the emperor is really anxious for the peace of the Church let us have a truly ecclesiastical council, away from the palace, where the emperor will not appear, nor any of his counts, nor judges to threaten; for the fear of God is sufficient, and the teaching of the Apostles, to enable the Council to secure the Church's faith such as it was defined by the Fathers of Nicea." There, for the moment, the matter of Liberius' signature was allowed to rest.

The Arians turned their attention to Alexandria. Plots were laid to entice the bishop, quietly, away from the city; but he knew his enemies too well to be so easily taken in. Finally they resorted to force. On February 8, 356 the imperial troops broke into the church where St. Athanasius was presiding at the night office. Their arrows flew right and left -- more than one of the congregation was slain -- and with drawn swords they made for the bishop. Despite his efforts to meet death, as centuries later St. Thomas of Canterbury, his attendants managed to get him away. From that moment the city knew its bishop no more. He simply disappeared from view, while the imperial troops hunted for him from one end of Egypt to the other. In Alexandria itself the churches were seized and handed over to the Arians -- the Catholics always resisting to the end -- and Constantius, fresh from legislating terrible penalties against the Pagans, now called in the Pagans themselves to assist in the forcible enthronement of yet another successor to Athanasius. It was once more a Cappadocian, and, like his predecessor, ordained at Antioch for his new post, a certain George whose chief claim to notoriety hitherto had been his skilful mismanagement of the imperial finances. Under George of Cappadocia the Catholics of Egypt were to suffer for the next few years as half a century before Catholics had suffered under Diocletian and Galerius. Once more the mines were filled with Catholic convicts, bishops, priests and laity alike, condemned for their loyalty to St. Athanasius.

The most outspoken defender of Nicea was now, and finally it seemed, driven out; and with him disappeared orthodoxy's last spokesman. For by this time Hosius was a prisoner and Liberius, also, far away from his see in exile.

Liberius, indeed, the emperor had not dared to silence in his own city; and, fearing riots, should he attempt openly to arrest the pope, he at last had him kidnapped by night. He was carried to the imperial court (357), and between him and his captors there took place an interview whose detailed record, preserved by Theodoret, is one of the golden pages of the history of the Roman See. With hardy courage Liberius recalled to the emperor himself the facts of the case, that the so-called trials of St. Athanasius by the different imperial councils had been so many mockeries, and that before pursuing further the Bishop of Alexandria, Constantius should proclaim his own belief in the creed of Nicea and recall the exiled bishops to their sees. The emperor, for a reply, could do no more than revile St. Athanasius as his personal enemy and demand that the pope should join in the " universal" condemnation. It was on this note that the scene came to an end. The emperor: "There is only one thing to discuss. . . choose the side of peace, sign and you will return to Rome." Liberius: "I have said farewell to my brethren in Rome. Ecclesiastical law is more important than living in Rome." The emperor: "You have three days to decide. Should you choose to sign you will return to Rome, if not think over to what place you would prefer to be exiled." Liberius: " Three days will not alter my decision. As for exile, send me where you will." Two days later the place was notified to him -- Beroea in Thrace. Before he left, the emperor offered him money for his expenses, the empress also. Liberius refused. The eunuch Eusebius -- the same who had two years before proffered bribes in Rome, and who had played a sycophant's part in the famous interview -- came forward also, offering a bribe. To whom Liberius suggested that before attempting to tip the pope it would be as well first to become a Christian !

The Arian triumph was complete in this, at least, that the Catholics were all completely muzzled and gagged. Not a single bishop was left in possession of his see who dared refuse to condemn Athanasius. But there the triumph ended. The cowed episcopate was very far from being in its heart anti-Nicene, and if no one dared openly defend the homoousion and its champion, no Arian on the other hand dared openly disavow it. The triumph would only be complete when the bishops who had been forced to renounce Athanasius were brought to renounce Nicea too. To this, then, the Arian energy next turned itself.

The old theological discussions were renewed and presently (357), there appeared a new statement of belief drawn up by the bishops in residence at the court at Sirmium. This is the so-called Second Formulary of Sirmium. Its teaching is Arian, and its manner of expression the most radically Arian so far. Not only does it not declare the Son to be of the same substance as the Father -- the Catholic teaching -- but it states definitely that the Son is unlike the Father. The plan of those who drew it up was that it should be sent round the episcopate to be signed by each individual bishop. But its first effect -- when the collection of signatures began -- was to turn the divergent tendencies among the heretics into so many hostile sects. From the beginning the really radical Arians, in the theological sense, had been very few. More numerous, but still a minority, had been the political Arians, ambitious place seekers, who saw in the trouble a chance for their own advancement, and who had "managed" the party since Nicea. The vast majority of the Arian bishops were what the majority of a new party so often is, enthusiastic, and confused in their enthusiasm, driven as much by the hope of avoiding what they feared as by zeal for anything positive: their only definite characteristics their suspicion of the homoousion and their docility to the ruling emperor. From this section had come the support for that succession of vague, ambiguous creeds which gradually deprived the faith of all definite meaning for those who adopted them.

The publication of the Second Formula of Sirmium, suddenly reviving the most radical kind of Arianism -- patent anti-Niceanism -- as the creed of the party, forced into joint action the vague and hitherto fluctuating body of middle opinion which, although suspicious of the homoousion as a definition of the traditional belief, was yet Catholic in mind and willing to express the relation between Father and Son as one of likeness of substance (homoiousion). St. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, was one of the chiefs of this section, but its real leader was Basil of Ancyra. The split between radical Arians (Anomoeans), and these so-called Semi-Arians (homoiousion party), bred in the group of Politicals a new subtlety. In their endeavour to keep the party together they grew ever more carefully vague, proffering finally as a basis of agreement the formula that the Son is like to the Father (homoios -- whence the name of Homoean sometimes given them). It is round the manoeuvres of these three sections to capture the favour and interest of the Court that the history of the next three years turns (357-360).

The Anomoean formula provoked criticism throughout the scarcely tamed West. It also, in their hour of victory, split the Arians. Immediately the prestige of the Anomoeans fell, and Basil of Ancyra became in Constantius' mind the all-important bishop of the day. The Second Formula was withdrawn. In its place Basil proposed one of his own fashioning -- the Third Formula of Sirmium -- a provisional statement designed to gain the support of the Nicene West, to be the basis of an alliance between the Westerns and those Easterns who, if they differed from the West as to the wisdom of the term homoousion and as to its suitability to express their common belief, agreed in that belief none the less. The moderate Arians in the East whom the sudden revelation of Anomoean aims and strength was driving slowly back towards Nicea would, it was hoped, come in too. Before such an alliance -- and with the imperial favour which Basil enjoyed -- Arianism would be ended for ever.

The new formulary was sent round and signatures began to come in. Its crucial point was its use of the word homoiousion where Nicea had used homoousion. To say the Son is of like substance with the Father as a way of denying that He is of the same substance, is of course to deny Nicea. But to make the assertion in opposition to the Anomoean teaching -- that the Son is not like to the Father -- is to use homoiousion in an orthodox sense. It was, so those who presented the formulary for Catholic signatures explained, as against the Anomoeans that the new term was used, and to avoid the misunderstandings which the Nicene term had bred.

For the complete success of Basil of Ancyra's scheme the signature of Liberius was essential. The formulary was presented to him and, in the sense in which it was offered, he signed it, adding to his signature a kind of appendix in which he made clear the meaning of his signature by condemning all those who say that "the Son is not like to the Father in substance and in all things." This appendix Basil accepted and he himself also signed it. The rout of the Anomoeans was complete. The real Arians were defeated now, in 358, as they had been defeated at Nicea thirty years before. A general council would fittingly sum up the whole affair and celebrate the new reunion, and where more fittingly could it meet than once again at Nicea?

At this moment, however, Basil fell out of favour with Constantius II; the Anomoeans and the Politicals came back. The council Basil had asked for was not abandoned. It would meet -- but a dual council, one section for the West at Rimini, the other for the East at Seleucia in Isauria -- and under Arian auspices; its work would be the imposition, not of the Third Formulary of Sirmium but of yet another of the vague Arian creeds that were a betrayal of Nicea. In the formulary proposed there was no mention at all of " substance," only the simple ambiguous declaration, "We declare that the Son is like the Father in all things as the Holy Scriptures say and teach." Under the circumstances this equivocal creed was an indirect denial of Nicea.

To Rimini (359) there came four hundred and more bishops, eighty of them professedly Arian, the remainder Catholic. The pope was not present, nor did he send a representative. The bishops voted against the proposed betrayal, but the imperial commissioner had instructions from Constantius that they were to be kept at Rimini until they signed one and all. The weary business dragged on then all through the year, negotiations, promises, threats, until, with what mental reservations to accommodate the contradiction between their thoughts and their actions we know not, all the bishops signed. At Seleucia there were fewer bishops -- 150 only, of whom only a mere handful were enthusiastic for the Nicene formula -- and the emperor's difficulties were less. The majority -- 105 -- readopted the Eusebian creed of Antioch (341). Thirty-two of the remainder signed a creed vaguer still. It was like to that adopted at Rimini, and it was this which was destined to triumph.

Delegates from both councils met at Constantinople. Those from Rimini made common cause with the Arian minority of Seleucia. Pressure on the delegates of the Seleucia majority did the rest. A joint council, at Constantinople, in the first week of January 360 published to the world their lamentable unanimity. Not the homoiousion of Basil of Ancyra had triumphed, in whatever sense one took it, nor the radical Arianism of the Anomoeans whom he had ousted. The victory had gone, once again, to the Politicals, to the section which opposed all attempts at precision in the hope of stabilising a happy permanent confusion where all parties, even the most contradictory, should find their place in the Church. Of their victory, and the surrender of the bishops, St. Jerome commented in words which have become famous, " The whole world groaned to find itself Arian." Liberius judged more truly of the surrender's value, writing of the Western bishops' action as a simple surrender to external pressure.

Whatever the next development which the Politicals had planned, it never matured for, within a few months, the power on which the party depended had vanished. The joint Council at Constantinople was held in the January of 360. In the May following, Constantius' cousin Julian, hitherto ruling Gaul as Caesar, was, at Paris, proclaimed Emperor. The West at any rate was delivered from Constantius and the Politicals. Eighteen months later (November 3, 361) Constantius himself was dead, and Julian sole emperor of the Roman world. In the new emperor's councils, bishops, no matter how "political’ would count for little. As in 337, an unexpected change of ruler had delivered the Catholics, in the very moment when their cause seemed utterly and for ever lost.

1    Some part of the responsibility for the troubles that came of the emperors' failure to understand their true place within the Church must, thinks Palanque be laid upon the bishops; but he notes well how they were handicapped by the emotions of the sudden revolution in the fortune of religion, the new utterly unprecedented situation, the undoubted enthusiasm -- of Constantine especially -- for the triumph of the cause of Christ; cf F. & M. III, 65.
2    The full detail of the theories of St. Lucian of Antioch is not known; they were certainly strongly tainted with subordinationism; cf. BARDY in F. M. III, 72.
3    There was one bishop from Africa, one from Spain, one from Gaul
4    cf. Palanque in F. & M. III, 29, for whom Constantine is " un passione. . temeraire. . . un impulsif. . esprit puissant mais confus. . superstitieux. . ' who combines " une mystique sincere " with " une ambition demesuree ".
5    e.g. St. Hilary of Poitiers.